Some of the smartest coaches in England ran from London to Brighton, which, owing to George III’s patronage, had since 1784 risen from a mere fishing village to the most fashionable of seaside resorts. In 1819, says Bradfield, upwards of 70 coaches visited and left Brighton every day; in 1835, says Bradfield, there were 700 mail coaches and rather under 3,300 stages running in England; he estimates the number of horses used at over 150,000, while 30,000 men were employed as coachmen, guards, horse-keepers, ostlers, &c. Mr. W. Chaplin, the member for Salisbury, was the largest proprietor; he had five “yards” in London and owned 1,300 horses. Messrs. Horne and Sherman ranked next to Mr. Chaplin; each had about 700 horses. HEAVY TAXATION OF COACHES. The heavy taxes laid upon the stage coaches were a fruitful source of complaint among proprietors. In 1835 a coach conveying eighteen passengers paid 3½d. per mile run to the revenue. To show the decline of coaching, it may be said that in 1835 the total revenue from the stage coaches amounted to £498,497 and in 1854 it had fallen to £73,903. The taxes were estimated to be one-fifth of the receipts, and this being the case it is not remarkable that, in the earlier days of the railroad, the people in country districts remote from railways should have suffered more inconvenience than they had ever known. It no longer paid to run a coach in such districts; and persons in the humbler walks of life found themselves set down at the station, ten, fifteen or twenty miles from home, with no means of getting there other than their own legs. Such districts saw a revival of old postal methods in the shape of boys mounted on ponies. The unequal competition between coach and train was continued for many years, ruinous taxation of the former notwithstanding. While the coaches were paying 20 per cent. of their earnings to the revenue, the railways paid 5 per cent., and carried passengers more rapidly and more cheaply. The coaches held their place with great tenacity, aided no doubt by the innate British tendency to cling to old institutions. The _Quarterly Review_ of 1837 mentions as a curious and striking instance of enterprise and the advantages of free competition that a day coach then performed the journey between London and Manchester in time which exceeded by only one hour that occupied by the combined agency of coaches and the Liverpool and Birmingham railway. The Act for transmitting the mails by railway was passed in 1838, eight years after the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester railway, and then it may be said coach proprietors recognised that their industry was doomed; but they maintained fares at the old scales until the coach was nearly extinguished. EARLY CABS.